After any close game, there is a cycle of fandom that the winning side and losing side must endure.  For the winning fan, exhilaration is followed by a bit of doubt that your team may have gotten away with one.  Then it's time to wake up and find your favorite message board.  After a few hours of good natured ribbing, next week becomes the main focus.

On the losing end of the spectrum, pure anger is followed by coping, which in turn becomes an attempt to identify that one play that sent your team into the jaws of defeat.  Then it's time to wake up, and avoid the message boards for a few hours, so as to prepare yourself for the wave of braggarts who suddenly populate your favorite message board.  After pointing out that their team just got away with one, next week becomes the main focus.

The discussion between these camps usually involves a variation of this question, "Do you really think you won that game, or can't you admit that we lost it?"  Naturally, people try to answer this question with some authority; however, with the pent-annual anomaly, we're talking about binomial outcomes. What one team fails to do, it must be understood that the other team still has to capitalize upon that failure.

Two instances of this argument were evident in week fourteen of the NFL season.  The up and down season of the Titans took a down, with an overtime loss at home to the more talented Chargers.  Over in the NFC, the Lions were once higher than Elton John's rocket man.  Now, they are mired in a five game slump.  They aren't perceived as at a low.  They're perceived as buried.

Lions fans are left to wonder: in the event that is an NFL game, are the Lions so unlucky as to meet a team whose turn it is to win?  Or are the Lions actively doing something (or perhaps NOT doing something) to lose games?  Oh sure, things would be so different if the normally reliable Jason Hanson puts the Cowboys away with that field goal.  Or maybe it was that dropped pass in the second quarter.  Or maybe it was when Romo kept a drive alive by avoiding that sack.

On the other hand, the Cowboys still had to execute.  The Cowboys aren't strangers to winning games late.  To defeat the Bills, the Cowboys needed a certain sequence of events to occur.  Lo and behold, one on-side recovery, one prevent defense, and a (actually two) 52 yard field goal later - the Cowboys got their fans into the first "Did we win or did they lose" argument.  A few weeks later, Terrence Newman was able to finish what Romo and TO started, with an interception to cap another close and late victory. 

Pretty much leading up to the game against Dallas, Detroit would either win, or lose big.  Detroit simply wasn't ready to win close and late.  Good teams are ready.  Despite an earlier drop, Jason Witten caught his fifteenth ball of the afternoon, and the Cowboys had won their twelfth game of the season.